joining me this week: ian birrell from the mail on sunday and ned temko from the christian science monitord here in the studio, at a covid—safe distance, the bbc‘s special correspondent, clive myrie. more than 27.5 million people infected, 900,000 dead. on monday, india recorded its highest daily infection figure — close to 91,000. heroic efforts by scientists researching vaccines, the guinea pigs testing them and those treating the sick give us hope for the future. yet, as those figures demonstrate, the reality is that we are only nine months into a pandemic the world health organization says could be with us beyond next year. between april and june, india's economy shrank by a quarter. between the first and the second quarter, south africa's economy was down by 51%. ian birrell, let's leave those bigger countries for a moment and talk about the smaller and poorer countries in the world, the least developed countries. every country has basically got the same question they are wrestling with. a new virus and we don't understand very much about it. how do we balance public health and wider

joining me this week: ian birrell from the mail on sunday and ned temko from the christian science monitorn the studio, at a covid—safe distance, the bbc‘s special correspondent, clive myrie. more than 27.5 million people infected, 900,000 dead. on monday, india recorded its highest daily infection figure — close to 91,000. heroic efforts by scientists researching vaccines, the guinea pigs testing them and those treating the sick give us hope for the future. yet, as those figures demonstrate, the reality is that we are only nine months into a pandemic the world health organization says could be with us beyond next year. between april and june, india's economy shrank by a quarter. between the first and the second quarter, south africa's economy was down by 51%. ian birrell, let's leave those bigger countries for a moment and talk about the smaller and poorer countries in the world, the least developed countries. every country has basically got the same question they are wrestling with. a new virus and we don't understand very much about it. how do we balance public health and wider health i

ian birrell, let's leave those bigger countries for a moment

joining me this week: ian birrell from the mail on sunday, and ned temko from the christian science monitor clive myrie. more than 27.5 million people infected, 900,000 dead. on monday, india recorded it's highest daily infection figure — close to 91,000. heroic efforts by scientists researching vaccines, the guinea pigs testing them, and those treating the sick give us hope for the future.

ian birrell, let's leave those bigger countries for a moment and talk about the smaller and poorer countriese world, the least developed countries. every country has basically got the same question they are wrestling with. a new virus and we don't understand very much about it. how do we balance public health and wider health issues? we are beginning to see now the danger of many developing world countries rushing down to follow the same tactics used in the richer western nations, in particular, because they have very different population dynamics. the data coming in is frankly pretty alarming. the figures in india sound terrifying with rising infections and a high number of deaths, but the fatality rates are much lower than in italy or the us or the uk or even places like peru. i've been looking at the figures in africa where, on the face of it, a lot of countries have done a lot better than expected when it comes to the virus. now we are beginning to see the wider impact and, frankly, it is utterly terrifying. the figures coming in... one study predicts a 9.1% increase in extreme poverty p